Daily Speculations The Web Site of  Victor Niederhoffer & Laurel Kenner Dedicated to the scientific method, free markets, deflating ballyhoo, creating value, and laughter;  a forum for us to use our meager abilities to make the world of specinvestments a better place.

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The Chairman
Victor Niederhoffer

At a recent party, six daughters gave a reading from a chapter on hoodoos in a certain book. "Hoodoos are not confined to humans. There are hoodoo engines and hoodoo ships", was the quote. It should be mentioned that imposters are not confined to the world of heads and shoulders, moving averages, and primary and secondary trends in the Industrials and Transports. They existed in 1900 in England when the wandering Jew, Bata Lobagola, wrote his best-selling memo of his escape from British West Africa, and customs of the monkeys and elephants in his home land. You will recall that they trampled the same path coming back from their winter migrations that they trampled on their initial migration. Regrettably Lobagola was an American con man, who spent many hours in the British Library to write his memoirs. Nevertheless, I claim that despite his impostiture, the moves back and forth in big markets often follow a Lobagola, and even though, nay especially because, Lobagola was an impostiture his name should be given to major moves which would seem to follow a symmetry up and down, e.g. the 40 doublings on margin up and down from $5 a bushel to $10 a bushel in beans in 2003 and 2004. What other markets are set for Lobagolas in 2005?

A Lobagola story: `The Monkey Whose Tail Was Not Caught' intro pg1 pg2 pg3 pg4 pg5

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